


Fishing With Arrows

by Untherius



Category: Brave (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Mermaids, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:56:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark had survived all sorts of abuse.  He'd been blown up several times, nearly killed by shrapnel, had his best friend and confidant try to kill him, been targeted by a disgruntled Russian, then by an international terrorist who'd also had it in for Pepper.  And that wasn't including the alien invasion led by a demi-god.  Surely he could survive children.  Couldn't he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fishing With Arrows

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Paiging Paige for suggesting Merida's parentage for this story.
> 
> Takes place several years after "A Bird Loves a Fish."

A flicker of peripheral motion caught Tony Stark's attention. Now what? He'd moved out onto the Stark Tower balcony in an attempt to get some peace and quiet. He should have known better than to attempt that in the middle of Manhattan. Yet locking himself up in an office or lab wouldn't have been a good idea, either. Not with three children rampaging around the place. There was only so much JARVIS could do without a body. Besides, it was Tony's turn to babysit and he didn't fancy the idea of having all the other Avengers put the smack-down on him for shirking his responsibilities.

He exhaled heavily. When had being a grown-up become so complicated? Oh, yeah. It had started when he'd let himself get sucked into the Avengers Initiative. And it had only gone downhill from there. On the other hand, he was probably a better man for it, or so Pepper kept telling him.

He lowered his tablet just in time to see a head of wild, red hair totter past him.

A young voice floated out from inside. “Merida! We're not s'posed to go out there!”

Tony's seven-year-old son Alexander promptly rolled out on his modified Segway. Tony was glad his daughter Amphitrite wasn't yet old enough to be that mobile. But she would be in a couple of years.

Merida, barely a year younger than Alexander, ignored him, making a bee-line for the edge of the patio. Tony slid the tablet back into the pouch he wore for it, then pivoted off his chair and onto his own Segway. The fluid motion from his chair translated into lateral motion on his wheeled device. In a few moments, he'd intercepted Merida near the edge of the veranda. He was ever so glad he'd had the foresight to install the plexiglass safety wall that even Rogers or the Bartons would have had trouble negotiating.

Merida looked up at Tony, then at the wall. She pointed. “I want me arrow!” she declared in a perfect Scottish accent.

Tony had never been sure why the girl spoke like that. Neither of her parents ever did. Natasha sometimes drifted back into her native Russian accent and Clint was dyed-in-the-wool American. But Tony had long ago learned to roll with it when it came to weird stuff.

He looked from Merida's pretty blue eyes to the clear barrier and sighed. Of course the girl had managed to fire an arrow through his back door and between the half-inch-wide gap in a two-meter-long section of plexiglass. He was thankful he'd insisted on the soft rubber tips that bordered on Nerf. The potential for breaking things inside had been bad enough. He didn't want to think about the legal issues stemming from some pedestrian on the street below suddenly sprouting a real arrow out the top of their head.

“I'm sorry, sweetie,” said Tony patiently. “It's gone.”

Merida glared at him. “Go get it,” she said.

Tony returned the girl's gaze, forcing himself not to glare back, once again thankful for the training afforded him by his own children. Though Merida was quite the handful all by herself. Which didn't surprise Tony, given who her parents were.

“Merida, honey, you know I have to stay here and watch you, right?”

Merida didn't respond at first. Tony could almost watch the gears turning in the girl's head. She knew the rules and he knew she knew. But, as with all children—hell, with most adults, too--she tried to push them. “Please?” she pleaded, batting her eyelashes.

“Then who would mind the three of you?”

“We could go with you!” she gushed. She really was quite adorable. If she'd been Tony's daughter, he'd have been hard-pressed to refuse her. She damn near had him wrapped around her little finger as it was.

Tony made a mental note to push for tag-team supervision. Letting everyone go off to who knew what had always made him a bit uneasy. Okay, Tony knew exactly what, but that wasn't the point. He had some of the bases covered. The possibility of one of the kids accidentally setting something on fire while he was in the water closet, for example.

Tony considered Merida's suggestion. He supposed that wasn't such a bad idea. Sure, he could put on the, er, Iron-Fish suit and quickly jet down, grab the arrow, and jet back up in minutes. But that would have been irresponsible. Tony chuckled to himself as he briefly mused on what he still considered to be the irony of himself, of all people, taking on the responsibility of parenthood.

On the other hand, getting himself, his two mer-children, and Merida all into the elevator at the same time might not be so easy. Remodeling his floor of Stark Tower had been one thing. But elevator shafts weren't so easily expanded. Then there was the matter of what he'd do if Merida were to take it into her head to do something impulsive like dart out into traffic. He supposed he could curb Alexander's impulses by putting him in charge of his sister.

“Merida, if we do that, you have to promise me that you'll stand right next to me, okay? We can't have you running out into traffic or taking off down the sidewalk, okay?”

Merida didn't say anything.

“You do understand why, don't you?” He knew she did, but kids just had to be pushed sometimes.

The girl deflated slightly. “Because it's dangerous,” she finally said.

“That's right. Now will you promise me you'll stay right next to me?”

Merida nodded.

Tony knew he'd have to push a little harder. He extended his hand, presenting his little finger. “Pinkie-swear?” He never thought those words would ever have come out of his mouth.

Merida exhaled, then wrapped her own pinkie around his. “Pinkie-swear,” she said resignedly, her accent making it sound more adorable than serious.

“Okay, kids,” said Tony, “let's take a stroll.” He briefly noted the irony of someone without legs talking about “taking a stroll.” “Alexander,” he added, “fetch your sister, please.”

Alexander sighed. “I guess,” he said, but complied.

Tony wheeled around and herded Merida back inside. The girl trotted along, bow in hand, straight toward the elevator.

“Merida, honey,” said Tony, “you'd better leave your bow up here.”

Merida glared at him. At such times, she was clearly Romanov's daughter.

“Just...” Tony gestured toward the coffee table in the expansive living area. “...put it over there.”

“But Mum says no weapons on the table,” she pouted.

Well, at least she paid attention to the rules, even if she was reluctant to actually follow them. Tony suppressed a laugh. It wasn't like he had to look in the mirror or something to find anyone else like that. “Well, I'll tell you what. This is my house and my rules. So if I give you permission to place your weapons on the table, you may.”

Besides, he added to himself, it wasn't as though everyone else in the building didn't have enough weapons to choke a camel, nor was it as though they were particularly careful about where they stowed them during visits. He'd lost track of how many times the kids had used Rogers' shield as a sled, or how often Mjolnir had doubled as a centerpiece during dinner.

After a couple of seconds, a mischievous grin spread across the girl's face. She trotted across the room, then lay her bow triumphantly in the exact center of the coffee table.

Tony smiled, then wheeled down the hallway on Merida's heels. He met Alexander, Amphitrite not exactly in hand, per se. Man, that girl was getting big! At least she was still small enough to share Alexander's wheels.

All four of them fit into the elevator with only inches to spare. Keeping their tails out of each other's ways was always tricky. Romanov had repeatedly compared their squeezing into the elevator to a game of Tetris and Tony wasn't at all sure the metaphor was the least bit exaggerated.

The moment the door opened on the ground floor, Merida somehow managed to wiggle out from her place in the back corner. Tony sighed, again dreading when Amphitrite would be old enough to be mobile. At least he could put off the driving thing for several more years.

Tony rolled his eyes, then rolled out of the elevator at full speed. “Keep up, junior!” he called over his shoulder.

The sound of Alexander's unit, not to mention Amphitrite's protestations, were right on Tony's metaphorical heels. He smiled to himself. He'd long known that any son of his wouldn't waste much time learning to keep up with his dad.

He careened across the Stark Tower lobby right on Merida's actual heels. That girl could move! Not that Tony was all that surprised given her parents.

“Mister Stark?” called the receptionist.

“Later!” he called as he zoomed past the desk.

The front glass doors slid open and Merida vaulted through them, down the steps and onto the sidewalk.

Tony braced himself for the jolt-jolt-jolt of the wheels dropping down each step and the slap-slap-slap of his fin smacking each rise on the way down.

He pulled up next to Merida, suddenly conscious of the way passersby seemed to tower over him. It had been eight years since he'd been deprived of his legs and he still hadn't grown accustomed to looking at the world from little more than waist level.

“Well?” he asked.

Merida craned her neck to look up at Tony, then past him toward the balcony far above street level. She considered it for a few moments before looking back toward the street. He could just about watch the wheels turning in her carrot-topped head.

The same gears were turning in his own mind. Although his were driven by a genius-level IQ and a working knowledge of Newtonian mechanics. Given the distance to the ground, resistance with the air, wind force and direction, it was highly unlikely it had fallen straight down. That arrow could have been just about anywhere.

“There!” Merida blurted, pointing at something.

Or...straight down had apparently been a possibility. At first, Tony didn't see it. Then, as a taxi drove by, a brief flash of neon green-and-orange caught his eye. And, wouldn't you know it, the thing was lying right in the middle of the street two lanes out from the curb.

Tony locked his wheels, a set of struts sliding down from the frame and bracing the contraption against the ground. Then he curled his fin up behind him.

That had been one of the more painful lessons he'd learned the first year. More than once, he'd braced himself with his tail, only to have someone, at least half the time a woman wearing high heels, step on it. While he'd once rather liked women in stilettos, and while he still appreciated what they did to a woman's calves, he'd quickly come to regard them as a monumentally bad idea for any number of practical reasons, not the least of which had to do with searing fin pain.

Tony glanced over his shoulder as his children wheeled up. Alexander set his brakes, his sister still whining.

“Amphitrite,” said Tony sternly, “please settle down.”

The girl glared at him.

“And don't you look at me in that tone of voice, young lady.” Man, that girl was a handful already and she was only four!

She deflated a little. “Sah-wy,” she said. Tony smiled and mussed her ginger hair before returning his attention to Merida.

“Now, Merida, what's our...” Before he could say 'plan,' Merida dashed out into the street. Tony swallowed a curse. He'd lost track of how many times he'd had to bite the language from his tongue since before his son was still in the womb. He wondered whether his pre-fatherhood self would have recognized him.

Had he had legs, he'd have lunged after her and possibly caught her, even if by the hair. She'd have yelled and screamed and cried and received a spanking which would probably have hurt about as much as the pulled hair. But she'd have avoided being run over.

Tony watched in horror as the girl dashed around several vehicles, ducked out of sight, then returned. He'd never been so glad of New York City gridlock. His heart was pounding when Merida bounced back up onto the curb, holding her arrow triumphantly.

“Young lady,” said Tony sternly, “don't you ever do that again. Do you have any idea how easily you could have been run over?” He hoped he was keeping the edge out of his voice.

Merida blinked innocently at him. It melted his heart and she wasn't even his daughter. He pushed that aside and gazed back at her, his brown eyes boring into her blue ones. “Back inside,” he said after a few moments. “You too, squirt,” he added to his son.

“Yes, Dad,” said Alexander. Then, “Amphitrite's slipping again,” he complained.

Tony sighed, then twisted around and extended his arm. “I've got her,” he said, taking his squirming daughter into his own arms. Da...dang, she was slippery and that was even with a cotton tail sheath! 

“Merida, stick with Alexander, okay?”

“Okay,” she said cheerily. It was a good thing they liked each other. One thing he'd noticed that fatherhood had in common with management was getting people to do things they already wanted to do, even if they didn't initially realize it.

“Honey,” she said to his daughter, “would you hold still?”

“No!” she complained.

“Do you really want me to drop you? Because that's what'll happen if you keep squirming. You do remember what happened the last time, don't you?”

Amphitrite froze and looked at him for a few moments. “Yes,” she said meekly.

“And?”

“It hurt.” She reached up and gingerly patted her head.

“And what else?”

“I was scared. And you and Mom were scared. And Alsandr.”

“That's right. And I almost caught my fingers in your gills that time, too. We don't want more of that, do we?”

“No,” she said dejectedly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and hung there.

Tony sighed. Children. He loved his to death, but there were moments he pined for his bachelor days. Those moments were mercifully fleeting.

He released the brake on his wheels, checked his six, and backed up. Alexander was a couple of steps ahead of him, as it were, and already at the base of Stark Tower's handicap ramp, Merida's red curls bouncing against her shoulders as she trotted along next to him. Tony wheeled after them, one arm supporting his daughter's gluteals, her tail bumping against his hip.

“Merida, Alexander,” he called as the lobby doors closed against the street noise, “hold up, please.”

He wheeled over to the front desk. He half-expected the receptionist to shoot him that look of hers, the one she'd done the first couple of years after he'd first acquired his tail. He'd never poked her about it and she'd never said anything, but he'd long ago learned how to read people and he could tell she was, for some reason, inherently suspicious of non-humans. Although after the Battle of Manhattan, he wasn't sure he could really blame anyone for holding onto that kind of attitude.

“Okay,” he said, leaning against the desk, “now I have a moment.” He shot a glance toward the kids, who waited patiently, though not exactly placidly, a few yards away.

The woman on the other side, a pretty blonde in her mid-twenties, flashed him a smile. He smiled back, noting her well-balanced cleavage from his peripheral vision. He was married, not dead. She handed him a veritable sheaf of papers. The mail. And him without a free hand.

“Merida? Would you carry this for me?” he asked her, nodding to the sheaf of envelopes and other miscellaneous papers still in the receptionist's hands. Great. In just a few short years, he'd gone from being completely self-sufficient to relying on a six-year-old just to carry his mail.

The girl trotted over and reached out with both hands, one still clutching the arrow. The receptionist looked suspiciously at Merida, then to Tony.

“You know, sir,” she said, “technically I'm not supposed to hand mail to anyone but you.”

“Well, I'm making an exception,” said Tony. He hoped his tone was disarming enough. The receptionist raised an eyebrow and he raised his own in return, adding his signature 'don't screw with me' head-cock. After a pause, he added, “I don't have a spare hand and I'll just pass it off to Merida anyway. So let's just cut out the middleman, shall we? Come on, I promise I'll make sure you don't get in trouble with the CEO.”

The receptionist sighed, then complied. Merida snatched the papers and beamed up at Tony before trotting back toward Alexander.

Back up in his apartment, Tony laid Amphitrite on the floor, then turned to Alexander. “Go back to whatever you were doing. I have to have a little chat with Merida here.” Alexander nodded, then spun around and headed toward their communal suite which held the large pool the Starks basically called home.

Tony turned back to Merida. “Go ahead and set the mail down there,” he said, pointing to his personal desk in the main living area. “Don't go anywhere,” he said as she started to leave.

Merida skidded to a stop and looked tentatively over her shoulder. Tony gestured toward a chair. Merida deflated, but padded over and sat down dejectedly. Kids.

Tony wheeled over, then dismounted to sit on the floor with his tail stretched out in front of him. He waggled his fin a couple of times and sighed, all the while looking Merida straight in the eye.

The girl looked like she was trying to melt into the chair. Tony was thankful he'd had plenty of experience with difficult people. Those incidents had never been enjoyable, but little did he know how much they'd prepared him for dealing with willful children.

“Merida...” he began.

“You're mad at me,” she interrupted.

Tony ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he said sharply. “Yeah, I am. Do you know why?”

“Cuz I coulda' got killed.”

“That's part of it.”

She looked away.

“Young lady, look at me when I'm talking to you.”

She looked abruptly back at him, her head still tipped downward.

“You told me you wouldn't do that,” Tony continued. “You promised. Pinkie-swore, in fact. That was supposed to be a sacred promise.”

Merida's lip began to quiver. “I'm sorry,” she said, her voice warbling a little the way it did when she was starting to cry.

Tony hated it when she did that. It always rapidly eroded his resolve. On the other hand, he at least liked to think it worked to prepare him for the not-far-off day when Amphitrite would start doing the very same thing.

“Sorry's not good enough. You broke a promise. You understand how serious that is, don't you?”

Merida nodded, her eyes glistening with the first tears.

“What do you think I should do?” Tony pressed. Merida didn't answer. “I know what I'd do if you were my daughter. But instead, I'm going to make you sit here and think about it. Then when your parents get home, I'll give them a full report and let them decide.”

Tony almost gave her a say in the matter. But it wasn't open to debate. Merida needed to learn to keep her promises and that was that. Besides, someday one or more of her decisions might just get someone hurt or killed and it never hurt to impress upon her the potential gravity of the consequences of one's actions. And he knew all too well how those consequences tended to catch up with a person.

Tony rolled over into the push-up position, his fin folding slightly against the pressure. He gathered his tail under himself, and inch-wormed deftly over to a nearby chair, levered himself into it, then started going through the mail.

He shot Merida a glance. She sat there, arms crossed defiantly, glaring at nothing in particular. But she showed no signs of going anywhere. Fine, let her fume. Maybe she'd at least get some of it out of her system. Besides, it wasn't really his job to discipline her. Or maybe it should be.

In any event, maybe it would be best to start going over plans before going anywhere. He should have known by now that he had to be specific with children that age. Truth be told, he hadn't been entirely sure what they were going to do once reaching the street either. Flag down some passerby? Tony sure as hell wasn't a Jedi, for crying out loud.

Tony exhaled heavily and stole another glance at Merida. He'd survived all sorts of abuse. He'd been blown up several times, nearly killed by shrapnel, had his best friend and confidant try to kill him, been targeted by a disgruntled Russian, then by an international terrorist who'd also had it in for Pepper. And that wasn't including the alien invasion led by a demi-god. Surely he could survive children. Couldn't he?


End file.
